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reality. The glamour soon wore thin, as thin as my meager wardrobe and Alice in Wonderland headband. Most awkward for me were the big fancy Upper East Side parties in the big fancy townhouses. Whether at the “Skinny” Iselins’, so upper-drawer—with that name, how could they not be?—where even Clem didn’t know that many people. Or at the Alex Libermans’, who gave huge parties for the downtown art crowd that Clem found tedious because he knew everyone and their cousins—the Libermans didn’t believe in cross-fertilizing their circles. Or at the Bernard Reises’, the artists’ accountant of the day, who amassed a large collection in lieu of fees and who, like the Libermans, also believed in giving what Clem
called “A-list” and “B-list” parties. Or perhaps at Mary Lasker’s, where people of every nationality and color stood about, no one seeming to know anyone else, all silhouetted in her all-white house, from the walls, floors, and furniture to the smallest petal on the smallest flower, and where I drank vodka lest I spill a drop, and never dared sit down on the pillows plumped just so. Those were the high-life times that had a way of promising so much and would end by turning my insides to stone.
    That fall was a time of having nothing to say and of routinely being asked, “Do you paint?” I would stand by Clem’s side after being introduced to whomever and try to listen to what was being said, and wonder if I would ever have something to add. But the conversations were about people, places, and things I had never heard of. On the rare occasion that someone expressed curiosity about me and what I did, I would venture a few words about being interested in poetry, perhaps mentioning Bennington or that I worked at TV Guide . No, I hadn’t published anything. Yes, Bennington was an interesting college. Yes, the most expensive in the country, quickly adding that I had had a small scholarship. And what was TV Guide ? they would ask. A new magazine that started up two years ago. How interesting, and what do you do there? I write some of the blurbs that tell about what shows are on. I was definitely not moving in a television crowd. Most people, including Clem and me, didn’t have sets, and those that did, claimed they didn’t watch them. I soon dropped TV Guide from my already impoverished repertoire.
    And there was always the top-ten favorite: How did you and Clem meet? By this time I could swear I could hear the underlying incredulity, more like: How on earth did you two ever meet? We met at a party for Paul Feeley. Who? Paul Feeley, the painter. Poor Paul—he wasn’t then, nor would he ever become, a household name, even in the small art-world household of the fifties. Very soon I dropped Paul from the how-we-met story, and the severely truncated version that I stuck with for decades became a shrug accompanied by, “Oh, at a party.” What was I going to say? “We met at a party. You must have heard about it. The party where Clem slugged Johnny Meyers and slapped Helen. But it was hunky-dory for me, because he told me I had blauen augen .”
    All to say, these few attempts to find a conversational bridge quickly
petered out. There was never a connection. I had entered Clem’s world without knowing the language and without any credentials. The people and places slipped through me so fast, and most I never saw again.
    Then one night in early December, there was that first party at Helen’s. I hadn’t wanted to go/I was dying to go. So curious to see Clem’s longtime girlfriend up close, where she lived, who her friends were . . . One thought that never occurred to me was that she might be curious about me, or be pissed at Clem’s new girlfriend. Why would she give a thought to the nobody from nowhere who was going out with her dumped ex on the rebound?
    That evening I ran headlong into the trap of